Monday, 24 September 2012

"The Satanic Video"

Oh Dear.
There are some reasonable points in Keller's piece. But even more moral equivalence and nonsense.
The worst para:

Like the fanatics in the Middle East and North Africa, our homegrown hatemongers have an interest in making this out to be a great clash of faiths. The Islamophobes — the fringe demagogues behind the Koran-burning parties and that tawdry video, the more numerous (mainly right-wing Republican) defenders against the imaginary encroachment of Islamic law on our domestic freedom — are easily debunked. But this is the closest thing we have to a socially acceptable form of bigotry. And their rants feed the anti-American opportunists.

"...fringe demagogues": refers to Terry Jones and the makers of "that tawdry video". Terry Jones is not a demagogue by its definition ("a political leader who seeks support by appealing to popular desires and prejudices rather than by using rational argument"), since he's not a political leader and in fact some of his arguments are indeed rational. But I'll grant he's a bit of a loony and as much of a homophobe as the most pious Islamists, because of his fundamentalist Christian religion. And the makers of the "tawdry video" (agree with that), are even less "demagogues".
As for the "imaginary encroachment of Islamic law", what of the Muslim Brotherhood in America's mission statement which is "eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers..."?
And the representatives of this MB in America include the go-to representative of Muslims in America, the Council of American Muslim Relations. (Learn about CAIR)
In the UK, we have the latest news of UK Sharia courts marrying girls as young as five....
Or what about the calls to criminalize "Insults to Islam"?
And meantime, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, in a broad-brush ad hominem, calls all (but one: Daniel Pipes) critics of Islam "pseudo-experts", when all the ones I know on the list -- and I've read most -- are very knowledgeable indeed.
None of this seems imaginary to me....

"...it is the duty of those who have accepted Islam to strive unceasingly to convert or subjugate those who have not. This obligation is without limit of time or space. It must continue until the whole world has either accepted the Islamic faith or submitted to the power of the Islamic state."

-- Bernard Lewis, renowned historian of Islam and the Middle East, in The Political Language of Islam, p72-3.

In other words:

"Islam is unique among religions of the world in having a developed doctrine, theology and legal system that mandates warfare against unbelievers."